Gwen and the Glowing Gas
by truthsetfree
Summary: Attempt to meet a challenge posted on progwenallies at LJ. Anything you recognize does not belong to me.
1. Chapter 1

A lit room in an otherwise dark house she knew contained alien life. All Tosh could tell her was that it wasn't a Weevil and it wasn't armed. That was what Gwen had walked into alone.

It was a full moon. And PC Cooper had known what that would mean when she had first seen it on her calendar. People would be out getting drunk, attempting to fly, streaking, molesting statues, lighting things on fire, driving on the wrong side of the road, breaking into large predator habitats at the zoo, getting into drawn out arguments and physical fights in bars over such relevant and controversial topics as "the best way to prepare corn," and basically doing any other dangerous and/or irrational thing they could to degrade the human race. Lunatics.

Aliens weren't much different, she found out. The team was stretched thin trying manage the mayhem.

Which was why she was on her own with a gun in her hand and a badge in her pocket. There simply weren't enough people to pair up and be everywhere they needed to be. Because she was still so new, they had tried to give her an easy one. Just a go and see. That's all this was supposed to be.

Grass whispered and crackled under her boots as she approached._ Confidence Cooper. If you believe you're in charge, they'll believe you're in charge. _The stairs squealed in spite of her best efforts. Finally, she arrived at the door.

The doorknob came off in her hand as she twisted her wrist, and she threw it away with a roll of her eyes. She didn't hear it land as she busted down the door with a solid kick. The impact left her knee aching, and she made a note about these particular boots perhaps not being the most appropriate footwear for these particular assignments. _Might be best keep an extra pair in the Hub._

"Hello!"

She stepped inside, gun raised and ready to shoot if she had to.

"I know you're in there. My name is Gwen. I'm with Torchwood."

There it was. The light. She could see it at the crack where the door ended, just before the floor began.

"I just want to talk to you."

Nothing. Not a sound.

She flung the door open, and moved to the side and peered around and saw…

Nothing.

No claws or hooves or tentacles.

Nothing. That's what she saw until she looked up to where it hovered.

It smelled like burnt sugar and glowed like a jellyfish. The pink orange red gas swirled towards her and she wasn't quick enough to pull her shirt over her face. Just a moment too slow.


	2. Chapter 2

"Gwen? Gwen!"

Bright blue eyes were all she saw as she started to open her own.

"Mmmmmm…"

"She's coming to."

Gwen blinked blearily. The entire world was a glowing haze of pink and orange. Groaning in pain and fighting back nausea, she tried to get up.

"Whoah there. Easy tiger. We need to make sure nothing's broken."

A bright light flashed before her and someone else asked "Can you tell me your name?"

"Ohhhh...Gwen…Cooper…Gwen Cooper."

"Very good. Do you know who I am?"

"Owen."

"Excellent. Do you remember where you are?"

Where was she? She looked around for clues. A residence of some kind, though old, and dilapidated. A bit of wind swept in and she remembered.  
"Go and see. Lights on at the old Spencer place."

"That's right. Do you know what time it is?"

"Ummmm..."

It was all so distant and vague. Like watching fish move in an aquarium. She thought, maybe, she thought she might have messaged someone on her cell phone when she had arrived. And the screen had said something right before she turned it off. It said…something with numbers, which would make sense, right? There it was, she had it now. "After 10:50. March 3rd."

"That's very good."

Owen turned away from her and said something softly to Jack.

Jack. Did he always have that purple blue green aura pulsing around him? He'd always smelled like sand and bergamot and that something she could never place. She reached up and ran her fingers through his hair. Sleek. Like her grandmother's old fur coat she used to play dress-up with. Same sort of color too.

"Um. Owen." Jack gently nodded down at her down at her, but all she knew was beautiful blue.

"Ah…right. Well, the scanner says she has no broken bones. Gonna have a lump on her head though. It does say her body temperature and the dilation of her pupils are well outside of the expected range."

"We better get her back to the Hub. Up you go!"

She could feel his heartbeat right through his hands.


	3. Chapter 3

The drive to the Hub was shortened by a "Step on it," but she neither knew nor cared. The only thing that mattered was getting ever nearer, as close as she could get, to Jack. Feeling his back tense with one hand as she ran her other up his arm and around his neck. The change in texture tingled and buzzed, and she barely heard his comment about "getting pretty friendly there" at all.

A few rescheduled green lights and a few rushed yellow lights later, they made it, and Jack tried to disentangle himself as Ianto opened the door with a raised eyebrow. "Whatever was at the Spencer place seems to have got to her." A bland "So it would seem, Sir," was his reply.

Down, down they descended her hands descending as well. "Whoah, hey there," he stopped her. She blinked without seeing a thing beyond him- blue green purple, him. She watched her own color flare up as he clutched at her hand and she laced their fingers together and leaned in. Pink and red and purple and lime became waves. Her mouth filled up with the taste of pineapple and coconut and she wanted to tell him everything all at once. Her tongue was heavy though, so she grabbed him and kissed, feeling it waken. Jack drew back panting, and she suddenly realized they were all staring at her, all of them, Tosh, Owen, Ianto, and Jack. Jack who she had just kissed. She felt her entire face burn and she knew she was blushing. It only lasted for a moment, and then it all faded away as once again the entire world but him went shaded and grey like some sort of charcoal sketch.

The smell was what caught her now and she nuzzled into him, breathing it in, as deeply as she could. Not just bergamot and sand and that thing she didn't know, but dark licorice and green apples and cloves and vetiver by turns as she moved around him.

He led her forward. Maybe they were dancing? But what sort of dance was this when he spun from her reach and her fingers flung themselves into hard clear wall trying to touch him again.

"I thought we agreed to send her on an easy one."

"It was supposed to be an easy one," Tosh said as she stared, both intrigued and concerned.

"Define easy."

"It was a full moon, Jack. I scanned for technology. There wasn't any. I scanned for Weevils. There weren't any. She went in armed to the teeth. What happened?"

Her ears rang and her eyes stung with tears. She wanted him near. It was too hot in here, she thought as she began to unbutton her blouse.

Her eyes caught his and she held them as her fingers fumbled with buttons she couldn't remember how to work.

"Jack."

"Huh? Right. We need to fix this." Shifting into command mode, he began to issue orders: "Tosh and Owen, I want you monitoring everything you can about her in there. Ianto-"

"I'll be in the archives, Sir, looking for any hint of anything that could have done this."

"I'll go over the original reports, see if I can spot anything. We'll meet back in an hour and compare notes."


	4. Chapter 4

"I've got nothing," he stated with a frustrated sigh. "Ianto?"

"There was nothing in the archives. I'm sorry Jack."

"Tosh?"

"All I could tell is that it's inside her, whatever it is, and it isn't solid or anything we have data for. The chemicals she's secreting aren't even recognized by the upgrade."

"Owen?"

"Her temperature is a few degrees higher than usual, slight increase in heartbeat, dilated pupils. Her level of orientation has declined to O1. She's oriented to person, but nothing else. And honestly I'm being overly generous with that assessment."

Another angry exhale. _They had to be missing something. He had to be missing something. He must have seen something like this before…a long long time ago._

"Alright. So we have some sort of parasitic non-solid…"

"That produces light- none of the outlets worked I remember that," Owen added.

"Without any sort of electrical current- I checked when I scanned for weapons."

"A non-solid glowing parasite?"

A beat of silence.

"Owen, how long can she stay like this?"

"She…can't. She just can't Jack. If her arteries constrict any further, or her temperature rises just a bit more, or her heart beats just a bit faster, she'll die."

Nobody's eyes met nobody's eyes. This was the price of Torchwood. They knew that. They'd tried to tell Gwen that. But had she ever really realized?

"What do you suppose it wants?"

They all looked at Ianto.

"There must be a reason it chose her."

"She could have just been the first convenient solid living form-"

"Then why not body hop between us?"

"Let's go ask."

"Jack-," _Owen began. What kind of conversation did he expect to hold? When he told him she was O1, that was a generous interpretation_.

Jack's chair was already swinging in circles though, and Jack was already out the door.

Owen shook his head and followed with the rest of the team.


	5. Chapter 5

She dragged her hands slowly across the bricks, feeling mortor crumble beneath her fingertips. Rough, and scratchy, and hard and cold. So cold. Even though this corner was too bright, it was still frigid.

Shivering, she sank down and clutched at her knees. She was alone and the world was etched colorlessly and meaninglessly around her.

She closed her eyes and thought of his blue green purple. She remembered his scent- bergamot and sand and that thing she didn't know, dark licorice, and green apples, and cloves, and vetiver by turns.

Suddenly, she felt warm, and she opened her eyes to a softer light. Him. He was here. Where? The door opened and he came, as though summoned.

Her eyes widened and she leapt to push and pound at the cloudy plastic that separated them. He came closer.

"Gwen?"

A name. He had a name. If she could say it, he might come closer. Juh. Jah. "Jack."

He stepped closer.

"Jack," she said it again, hoping he'd let her out, or enter, it didn't matter which he did as long as he was closer. As close as he could be. Her fingers twitched, wanting to touch him again.

"Well that's more than we've got out of her in the past hour."

Her eyes were held unblinkingly by blue.

"That's right. I'm Jack. Who are you?"

Her? She was…she was…was she human? She was sweet sap and the sound of wings flapping against wind, and luminous moons, and hot colored crystals, and water ripples, and clouds. Yes. That was her. She showed him this without words as she gazed back at him.

"You're a long way from home."

Home? But he was here. He was home. He was standing right there, not centimeters away from her, just on the other side.

"Jack? What's going on?"

"It's taken over, whatever it is. It communicates without words. Some sort of telepathy, some empathy as well."

"Well what did it say?"

"That's the thing. It can't speak. "

"It just said your name twice."

"It's using Gwen. She's in there somewhere, but she's not in control."

She watched his lips move as he spoke and her fingertips stroked the smooth hard thing between them.

"…probably from somewhere in the Ampikartzik Nebula or thereabouts."

He turned back to her now.

"Which brings us back to why we're here in the first place. Or rather, why it's here. Why are you here? What do you want?"

Here…want…want warm and blue green purple. Want sand and hands. Want to tell you coconuts and pineapple. Want vetiver and cloves and apples and dark licorice and bergamot. Want tingly buzz. Want Jack.

"Jack."

"She does seem rather fixated on you."

"What can I say? It isn't always easy being this attractive. Tosh, did you get that centrifuge up and running yet?," he asked, pressing buttons on his wristband.

"The centrifuge? Yes," she answered. " I mean, it still has a few glitches, but-," she cut her own sentence short as the door opened and Jack walked through. "Jack, what are you doing?"

"Who am I to deny true love?," he replied, winking. "When it's in, send me through the centrifuge."

"Jack that centrifuge was designed to separate water from porous asteroids and I haven't got all the glitches out! It'll kill you!"

He heard not a word as he kissed her, and merged. Then everything went black.


	6. Chapter 6

"Unh…Where…where am I?"

"You're in the hub," Tosh answered, her attention divided between Gwen and adjusting dials.

"How did I-"

"I'll explain it all to you later. Right now, you just need to lay still. Your electrolytes are all out of whack and you're going to be feeling hot and cold by turns for a while until your body can remember what a normal temperature is. There may be visual and auditory effects- hallucinations as well. If you try to bring yourself into an upright position, you will certainly feel dizzy, and you may pass out, so Don't Move."

She blinked, blearily. He seemed concerned. And very insistent. She didn't really feel like moving anyway.

"Welcome back."

Tosh. Owen. Ianto.

"Where's Jack?"

Lips became grim lines.

"Where's Jack?" she repeated, attempting to get up.

"Lay down. You'll hurt yourself."

She struggled. Doctor's orders be damned!

"He's in there."

She looked to where Ianto had indicated. Some sort of giant device. Not from here, that was for sure.

"It's a centrifuge," Tosh informed her, before she could even ask.

Centrifuge. She remembered centrifuges, she thought as she settled back into a resting position. Centrifuges…spun things around, didn't they? She'd been on a centrifuge ride at a fair once. It had been fun. Spinning faster and faster, the weight of the air itself pressing you against the wall. Why was Jack in a centrifuge? And why did everyone look so frightened?

"What is the centrifuge for?"

Tosh twitched. It was so slight that if Gwen hadn't been watching so carefully, she might have missed it entirely. But it was there.

"Tosh," she prompted.

"Ordinarily, it separates water from porous asteroids."

"Ordinarily?"

"Yes, well, today…If this works the way it's supposed to…Today it will separate out the alien gas from Jack's body."

Gwen felt light-headed, and somehow she knew it wasn't the after-effects of whatever the hell had happened to her.

"What aren't you saying, Tosh?" _If this works the way it's supposed to._ "What do you mean, if this works the way it's supposed to?"

Tosh pressed the final button. She was Mengele. She knew it, and she couldn't look at any of them.

She stared at the screen instead. She had a duty to watch this.

Gwen's eyes followed hers to the monitor.

Jack's body, the body they knew as belonging to Jack, spun around and around. Faster, and Gwen could barely make out the difference between his hair and skin. Faster and she could barely tell that it was him. Faster, and the monitors started to alarm. Faster, and they all stared at the printed peaks and valleys.

Tosh pulled a pair of unnecessary goggles down, so none of them would see her tears. If you look up, she had learned long ago, if you look way way up, sometimes that will make them stop. But she had to watch what happened, and she doubted it would work this time anyway.

It ended of course, in a bloody mess.

The only good thing, was that the being had been contained. Imprisoned. Gwen thought the capsule looked like something out of Ghostbusters, and said so. Eventually, they were even able to laugh about it.

Jack revived hours later, saying he could taste pomegranates. Too many hours by anyone's count. Not that they'd admit it out loud.

But he revived, and all the relevant information was recorded and stored in the archives, and it became just another story of Torchwood, that in a mere matter of decades, only Jack would remember at all.


End file.
